


and prove your body wrong

by paperclipbitch



Category: The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: F/M, Het, Post-Episode: s01e08 The Defenders, Yuletide, canon adjacent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 13:19:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17044451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperclipbitch/pseuds/paperclipbitch
Summary: Neither of them can read minds, but they both fake it for their day jobs.





	and prove your body wrong

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Quin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quin/gifts).



> [Title from _The Crow_ by Dessa.] Timeline-wise, this is set... post- _Defenders_ , but obvs in a handwavy way where Matt didn't vanish from the world at the end, so it doesn't take season 3 of _Daredevil_ or season 2 of _Jessica Jones_ properly into account, if that makes sense. So it's canon...ish.
> 
> **Quin** wanted to have in-depth descriptions of how Matt experiences the world, and a bit of how-the-hell-did-Matt-and-Jessica-end-up-dating, so hopefully I've managed something like that in here!

One of these nights, Matt might actually try relaxing; maybe he’ll read something, or try one of those podcasts Karen is always suggesting, or he’ll take a bubble bath and practice falling asleep and not just tipping sideways into unconsciousness because that’s all that’s left to him. Tonight, he’s settled for working, fingers skimming along his braille keyboard, half-listening to the city though his closed windows: the hum of the lights in the billboard opposite, the disjointed staccato of the different sets of feet on the sidewalks below, snatches of phone conversations and car radios that his brain dismisses before he even consciously registers them. The constant buzz and beat of Hell’s Kitchen that flows around him and through him, as much a part of him as any energy that Danny can summon up and punch you through a wall with.

He can hear his bones shifting in his knuckles when he registers his skylight opening, fingers curling automatically into his palms, the creak of tense skin, but then he hears the boots hit the floor and recognises the heartbeat – _ugh, Murdock, you’re like some gross teen vampire_ – and, after a moment, he manages to relax again, the imprinted paper of his notes cooler against his fingertips when he stretches them back out.

“I offered you a key,” he points out evenly.

Jessica doesn’t bother to reply with words, just tuts, and stomps down the stairs. She’s an assortment of little sounds beside her heartbeat – the creak of her boots, the slide of her hair against the shoulders of her jacket, the way her breath catches just so in her ribs because it’s cold outside – that Matt knows and catalogues instinctively. He’s never mentioned that he can hear the soft pat of her eyelashes against each other, that she blinks less often than Foggy and Karen maybe put together, because he suspects she’d initially tease him and then get too quiet, too thoughtful, in that way where he can tell where she is in her laundry cycle from her smell, can tell how much sleep she’s had from the stringing of the tension in her bones, but he can’t tell what she’s thinking.

Neither of them can read minds, but they both fake it for their day jobs.

There’s a smell of blood that isn’t Jessica’s trailing behind her, not strong enough to be anything to worry about, but present anyway. Trish’s shampoo, Malcolm’s cologne, three or four cups of black coffee, just enough whisky to take the edge off a cold night and leave her teeth singing, but not enough to get her drunk. This is how Jessica smells most of the time, maybe add in a little photograph developing fluid depending on the day, but it’s as familiar as Karen’s favourite herbal teabags, Foggy’s detergent. Matt doesn’t let much become too comfortable, can’t afford to, but every person is a patchwork of sound and scent, and some of them have settled into being more like quilts than others.

There’s beer in Matt’s fridge, next to some kind of healthy smoothie thing Foggy stuck in there last time he was trying to fix Matt by buying him nourishing groceries, and below a couple of half-eaten cartons of take-out that have about a day and a half left before he has to chuck them. Jessica doesn’t get a bottle out for him, smacks the cap off on the edge of his sideboard, and flings herself onto Matt’s depressed couch with a creak of springs and the slide of her boots against the cushions. She’s maybe the only person who takes even less care of Matt’s apartment than Matt.

He could point out that he didn’t buy beer, that Foggy didn’t buy beer, but all he’ll get is the sound of Jessica rolling her eyes, _dummy_ , and her hackles raised for more hours than she’ll even be conscious of. In many ways, Jessica is the stray cat you leave the door ajar for, lay out a saucer of Jim Beam and try to keep out of range of her claws before she spooks and flees with a slash and a hiss. Matt’s not exactly doing much better himself, but most of the time he can feign it like he means it. Instead, he sits still, fingers skimming the same line of text over and over, and listens to Jessica taking her edges off.

The memories are fuzzy now, but Matt remembers his life before his accident, when he could see in a wide array of colours and relied pretty solely on that sense, and a microwave beeping several blocks over didn’t wake him bolt upright in the middle of the night. He remembers, too, the monsters under the bed and in his closet, the ones that he knew were there no matter how many times his dad slammed the doors or swept his hands through the space to show him there was nothing there; how he could be shut in a room entirely alone and yet feel them there, know what they were doing and thinking even with nothing at all to look at. Of course, Matt is older now, and he’s learned that he contains multitudes far worse than any monsters his imagination could conjure, but the process of having another person in his space is much the same. He doesn’t need to be turned toward Jessica to see the fiery edges of her silhouette shifting, doesn’t need to be able to hear her relaxing by inches into the couch cushions or the evening of her breathing, her heartbeat, to know what she’s doing. She’s strung into the world around him, and everything she does thrums and shivers and sings.

“You want to talk about it?” Matt offers, and Jessica’s laugh is more a breath, a suggestion of a sound.

“Do I ever?”

Matt tips his head to concede that one, shuts his computer and listens to it whirr itself into hibernation, and comes to join her, takes the empty beer bottle from her hand and abandons it to the coffee table, where it teeters but doesn’t fall. She’s quiet, but her wariness has blurred, and she doesn’t say anything when he sits beside her. Jessica isn’t passive, far from it, hardly lets anything at all happen without a sharp opinion and a token refusal, but she meets him halfway, tilts her mouth to his when it takes him a moment to be sure of his angle. 

She tastes of the cold outside, the patina of New York – people and pollution and something that always tangs metallic but Matt’s never been able to place – and of the beer and the whisky and the coffee, and then of Jessica, and of late nights and a little tang of wool from where she pressed her face into her scarf against the chill, the scarf Matt can still smell himself on, months later. He doesn’t consciously catalogue her anymore, doesn’t need to, but he likes ticking things off the way they’re supposed to be. Jessica’s an insomniac, and her turning up in the middle of the night like things are fine or things are falling apart and there’s not much difference which isn’t exactly unusual – or new, for that matter – but Matt likes the reassurance against his tongue anyway.

“Okay?” he says when they part, his lips smarting, Jessica’s heart beating in counterpoint to the buzz of the neon across the road, someone laughing too loud in the street below, everything a blur when she’s this concentrated, this close. 

Jessica murmurs _ugh_ , perhaps her token protest, perhaps her impatience, but Matt’s never lead anywhere she hasn’t followed, and her reluctance pares thin these days. “Okay,” she allows, hands drifting cold and sure into his hair, and again, soft and sharp and a second away from his mouth, “ _okay_.”


End file.
